Jerry Coyne miffed at Alvin Plantinga’s Templeton win

Reader Mark called my attention to the fact that John Templeton Foundation (JTF) has bestowed its annual Templeton Prize on someone who’s not only a deeply misguided religious philosopher, but also has promoted intelligent design and criticized naturalism.

Thanks to Jerry for spelling that out…

Having made clear that he does not attend the same Bible Study as Plantinga, Coyne then says,

All of this casts doubts on Templeton’s claim to be increasingly down with science, for, after all, Plantinga is pretty much an intelligent design creationist. Although he’s waffled on this a bit in the past, he seems to have settled on ID creationism. I’ll quote Michael Ruse from The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2011, and, having read Plantinga’s book, I concur with Michael:

Now, Plantinga has given us a full-length treatment of his views on science and its relationship to religion. I can only say that either he has changed his mind in the last year [when said he didn’t dismiss Darwinism] or, shall we say, he was not being entirely forthcoming. There is a chapter of the book on Intelligent Design Theory and I challenge any independent person to read it and not conclude that Plantinga accepts this theory over modern evolutionary theory, especially the dominant modern Darwinian evolutionary theory. But read the chapter yourself if you have doubts about what I claim. Make your own judgment.

Lots of people are “soft” on the idea that Templeton can do what it wants with its money. We’ve wondered about some of its choices in the past too. But this one establishes that Templeton is not in Coyne’s pocket any more than in anyone else’s.

See also: Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga wins Templeton Prize “an American scholar whose rigorous writings over a half century have made theism – the belief in a divine reality or god – a serious option within academic philosophy”

News, the stark ideologically driven resentment and name-calling dismissiveness towards a greatly distinguished academic whose corpus of work will stand for the ages speaks for itself. The prejudice that “creationists” are ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked seeps out tellingly from Coyne’s subtext. Apparently, Coyne utterly fails to realise that Plantinga is not on trial here, Coyne is, and Coyne fails to make the grade. KF

PS: Mr Coyne would be well advised to study the general structure of worldviews (e.g. cf. a 101 here on). In so doing he may learn that there are properly basic, worldview core beliefs that need not be self-evident to the ideologised to the contrary, nor analytic nor incorrigible, nor derived from others by proofs acceptable to all, that however hold such explanatory elegance and power that they are patently reasonable and responsible to hold.

It’s my perception that materialistic academics tend to be lazy thinkers and openly unprofessional in their language and behavior, and as Bill Nye made clear, dangerous to a free society with their totalitarian tendencies. Coyne’s sneering, condescending behavior is not an exception among materialists — it’s the rule. They are that way because they can be — that and the fact that they have no moral compass. Power corrupts as they say and materialists remain dominant in academia and culture. Fortunately, that is changing as the bankruptcy of materialism becomes clear.

‘Village idiot’, indeed. Coyne and Gould are respectable scientists, doing laboratory and field work to bolster an already proven field of research.

Plantinga gave us the deep thought of, ‘Reformed Epistemology’. This says belief in God can be rational even without physical evidence. Umm, I already new that, it’s called ‘faith’.

One thing though, that he missed, it is not, ‘rational’. Belief in something that never makes itself known is not rational, in English we use another word; insanity.

His support of ‘non-evidence’, though I’m sure makes the religious happy, does nothing for science, I’d prefer proof. It’s a pitty BA77 doesn’t post anymore, because you could be sure he would now write screeds about the Shroud of Turin.

Coyne spent a life time studying fruit flys, and teaching evolutionary biology, his mentors were, Richard Lewontin, and Theodosius Dobzhansky.

I know who I’d rather talk to, as that person would at least talk in comprehensible English, and have tons of experimental anecdotes.

Plantinga would bore your pants off, with metaphysical musings, neither he or you have the slightest chance of proving, as he himself admits.

Coyne’s books are funny, understandable, and backed up by thouroughly thought out experiments.

Plantingas books are a dense night mare, of the never to be proved word salad, of the overly paid mystic.

If by “ripped to shreds” you mean that Gould adopted a nasty tone and maintained it through many paragraphs, you are correct. If by “ripped to shreds” you mean that Gould posed compelling arguments that Johnson is wrong, you need to have your baloney detector checked.

For anyone who would like to read it, Gould’s criticism of Johnson is here.